Just wondering what people would think about placing certain restrictions on the number of games you can play with a particular team for certain periods of time in the champ ladder, in order to try and even the playing field a bit overall, and more specifically, to address the early grinder advantage.

I thought a couple of things that might be interesting are:

1) A cap on the number of games per X period of time with any specific team.

This could work a couple of ways. I imagine there are restrictions imposed by the flexibility, or lack thereof, of the administrative tools in the game, and the time the admins have available to devote to the ladder, but I think an ideal situation would be something where you have a progressive cap system that allows for a few more games each week of the season.

So it would start out like: 7 games allowed per team in week 1. Then 10 games week 2. 15 week 3. And so on.

This way you can still start a team later in the season and have a chance to grind your way into the playoffs, but it also removes the advantage for people who are able to somehow pump out like 40 games in the first week (sounds like an exaggeration, but Ive noticed one or two coaches in particular are actually doing this over the past few seasons, with kill teams, which definitely puts them at an advantage).

You would still be able to play as many games as you want as a coach. You'd just have to start a new team after hitting your cap for that week if you want to keep playing. This would also encourage a diversity of races in the game, since the heavy players would have more teams going and are more likely to spread it around a bit in terms of race, instead of just trying to grind out their 40 games with their favourite race before they move on to something else.

A more simple way to do it would just be to cap it for the first half of the season. Say 10 games per week for the first 2-3 weeks, then remove the cap. Still basically accomplishes the same goal, and might be a little easier to manage.

Obviously all these numbers are just random numbers Im throwing out there and could be tweaked as appropriate, but just wondering what admins and players think of this?

2) This idea is much more simple - maybe cap the total number of games a team is allowed to play in champ. This is much less of a problem than the first issue, but still, its a little disheartening to look at the ladder and see the top chaos team with about 70 games played and a team full of clawpombers. I know the current points system sort of includes diminishing returns past game 42 or so, which naturally curbs players away from doing this. But if you have a good enough record going, or no challengers near to your record, you can really just rack up the development whereas the other team are going to dis-incentivized from doing the same if they are in competitive races and dont want to risk losing their spot.

Its a problem in the sense of giving that team an advantage for playoffs, and also just making it very difficult for people who cant grind out that many games to match them. Even with the diminishing points system, you are still getting positive points for wins, and the team is so developed at that point that you're gonna rack up a ton of concedes and easy wins, making it very difficult for someone to make a late run and catch you when they can only afford to play ~30 games or so.

I feel like a cap of 50 games or so would be easy enough to implement and would prevent the uber teams from popping up. What does everyone think?

Capping the number of games (in any way) limits the number of total games played and the number of teams in any one pool. Given low population is one of the major limiting factors as it is right now that simply isn't going to happen.

There are better ways to address the "early grinder" advantage, such as rewarding people less for playing against weaker teams and more for playing against stronger ones.

why would it limit the total number of games. You can still play unlimited games, you just have to start a new team. Could even start a new team of the same race. All it limits is the amount of games you play with one specific team in a specific time span.

Curious how you would reward people more or less for playing specific opponents... but im highly skeptical on the face of it. Interested to hear more though

People want to play the teams they want to play. Prevent them doing so and some (not all) won't play at all.

Elo is an example of a ranking system which rewards people less for playing worse opponents or more for playing better ones. I'm working on an Elo-based system (not specifically Elo, but with similarities) which would enable that.

why would it limit the total number of games. You can still play unlimited games, you just have to start a new team.

Not everyone gets off on that sort of serial monogamy - quite a few people enjoy playing the same team for an entire season... in fact, there have been plenty of people who tried to push to allow teams to span multiple seasons in CCL (to no avail, of course). There's already a 6-week lifespan on teams... an <x> game lifespan would discourage those folks from continued play in CCL after they'd hit the arbitrary cap.

One of the main goals of CCL development has always been "get people to play more matches!". This sort of idea involves trampling that in favour of "make things more fair for latecomers!". Ultimately I think we'd all like to see both being seen to, but not the latter at the expense of the former. Also, I'm not sure its in the game's best interest to potentially limit people who play more often for the benefit of people who play less often.

Curious how you would reward people more or less for playing specific opponents... but im highly skeptical on the face of it. Interested to hear more though

It's the premise behind rating difference systems like elo - you gain points for winning a match relative to how likely you were to win it... so, winning against a superior opponent nets you a lot of points while winning against an inferior opponent nets you very few points. It's a great idea on paper...

...but it has never worked well for Blood Bowl. Those systems rely on the rating difference being a good estimator of match outcome, and to become that requires performance information to develop the rating from for each player/team/whatever. Teams in online, open play like COL and CCL typically have very short lifespans which means performance ratings tend to be lacking, and when your opponent's rating is inaccurate, the change in yours from winning or losing makes yours more inaccurate, etc.

CCL is a competitive environment with well-defined seasons. Saying that its not fair that someone has trouble competing with people who start at the beginning and play the whole seasons as someone who starts later is a bit like saying its not fair to join a tournament half-way through and have trouble winning it... or starting a semester of university half-way through and being top of the class. If you're not as serious about playing as the other guys, don't be surprised when the other guys take home the more serious accolades.

I support you Stringer. But dont try to reason with the guys on this forum... I tried.

It's not a democracy, hotdog - it's a combination of reasoning and politics. Whining that people don't listen to you when you're obviously (in your own mind) right is not a sound example of either of those things.

why would it limit the total number of games. You can still play unlimited games, you just have to start a new team.

Not everyone gets off on that sort of serial monogamy - quite a few people enjoy playing the same team for an entire season... in fact, there have been plenty of people who tried to push to allow teams to span multiple seasons in CCL (to no avail, of course). There's already a 6-week lifespan on teams... an <x> game lifespan would discourage those folks from continued play in CCL after they'd hit the arbitrary cap.

One of the main goals of CCL development has always been "get people to play more matches!". This sort of idea involves trampling that in favour of "make things more fair for latecomers!". Ultimately I think we'd all like to see both being seen to, but not the latter at the expense of the former. Also, I'm not sure its in the game's best interest to potentially limit people who play more often for the benefit of people who play less often.

Well the overall cap I'm suggesting is very much secondary, and less important, than the main idea of capping games per week for a specific team. If they did put in an overall cap, I'd assume it would be quite high - like over 50 games. Very few teams actually reach that point each season anyway so it would only be limiting to a handful of people, and it would promote a more equal competition across the board, which seems a fair tradeoff to me. And if you do just want to play one team and develop it endlessly, thats what open ladder is for.

But in terms of the games per week idea, people could still play the same team for the entire season, and theoretically play an unlimited amount of games with any specific team too (if the total cap wasn't implemented) because the per week cap would be lifted toward the end of the season, since its no longer needed to reduce the early grinder advantage at that point.

I totally agree with you that developing teams is the major draw with this game, so any idea to make the ladder more fair cant impede that too much. I dont really think either of these ideas do that to any significant extent.

And in terms of your comment about fairness, yeah I agree youre never gonna make it perfectly fair for everyone regardless of commitment level, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to even things out where you can do so without harming the game.

People want to play the teams they want to play. Prevent them doing so and some (not all) won't play at all.

Elo is an example of a ranking system which rewards people less for playing worse opponents or more for playing better ones. I'm working on an Elo-based system (not specifically Elo, but with similarities) which would enable that.

But people would still be allowed to play any team they want to play, and putting the total games cap idea aside, they can play as many games with any team as they want (and even with the total games cap, if you set it to say 55 games, how many people would that actually affect in a given season? you have the numbers on this im sure, but Id be shocked if more than a handful of teams get over 55 games in a given ladder season)

But focusing on the weekly cap, all it would do is slow people down from grinding out 40 games in the first 10 days with a single team, and I would argue that the competitive disadvantage that the early grind creates probably costs more games from the total # of games being played in the ladder (out of frustration, etc) than the restriction would cost (which theoretically would be zero since you can still play all the games you want, with any race you want.)

Think of how it works now. The people who grind a ton of games with one team until its more or less maxed out for champ ladder purposes have two choices. Either A) go on to play as another team or just sit and wait till the end of the season.

Under my idea, both of these things are still possible, except they get spread out more over the course of the season, which is a desirable outcome for everyone. If you want to get multiple teams going, you do that here too, except you will be starting your other teams earlier. There would be more teams at a more equal level of TV all the way through the season. And if all you wanna do is grind out your 40 games (or as many as you want) with one team, you can still do that, but you just do it over the course of the season instead of in the first few days, which Im sure we all agree is better for the fairness of the competition.

Speaking of fairness, you dont seem to be considering how that, and the overall quality of the ladder, factors into the amount of games played. You seem to be analyzing this as "hmm, this could potentially keep a couple people from playing a couple extra games per week if all they wanna do is grind with a single team, and they only want to do it in the first week and would refuse to play if they had to do it throughout the season." Even if that is true of a significant number of people (which I highly doubt, and there is no evidence or way to really prove that), it still leaves out the fact that there could be people who currently dont play, or play less than they would, because they are frustrated with the current system, or they see someone bang out a quick 40 games with their favourite race and now see no point in trying to compete.

As for the ELO thing, you didnt really answer or explain anything at all... just repeated what you said before. Im asking how it would actually work in practice.

edit: @VoodooMike explained ELO, and it works pretty much as I suspected. And I agree with him, sounds great in theory but I dont this would work very accurately at all in this game, for the same reasons he stated.

Except they're not: you're specifically limiting them to which teams they are able to play (that's teams, not races). The first few weeks of any season is where the most games are played: you'd reduce that.

which theoretically would be zero since you can still play all the games you want, with any race you want

But not with any team you want.

The people who grind a ton of games with one team until its more or less maxed out for champ ladder purposes have two choices. Either A) go on to play as another team or just sit and wait till the end of the season.

And people have the option to challenge their records, preventing them from qualifying or forcing them to keep playing. I would argue that the problem isn't people trying hard, it's people giving up before they've even started. You said it yourself:

they see someone bang out a quick 40 games with their favourite race and now see no point in trying to compete.

...

Speaking of fairness, you dont seem to be considering how that, and the overall quality of the ladder, factors into the amount of games played

Actually I'm doing just that by looking to factor opponent quality into Elo (it's a name, not the band). I understand Mike's objections and he has been very helpful with what I've been working on. I think there are ways to overcome the uncertainty issue with systems like TrueSkill (which applies variance to ranking), and that's the direction I plan on moving next (it's simpler because it's a 2-player game).

Oh, and the reason I didn't explain Elo in detail is I figured you had access to Google. It's actually surprisingly accurate when the appropriate factors are considered. Straight elo isn't very good, but Elo factoring in the better predictive methods of assessment of a match (TV, zSum) is proving pretty good so far (82% correct prediction of matches in the dataset used so far - further testing to come). If it maintains that sort of level intend to see how it works out when the TrueSkill system is applied next.

Beyond the issue of whether such a system is desirable, there is the issue of whether it is practical. I would say it is not. The entire moderation and administration of the ladder is done manually at the moment: we download data, parse it, and apply the results on two platforms: in-game and via web application. There's no way to prevent people from playing 10 games in a week, and trying to police it will lead to a lot of frustration from both sides. Not only that, it would require pretty time-sensitive download, parsing and action: again, this is a further load on the admin team which we're not going to do.

Well the overall cap I'm suggesting is very much secondary, and less important, than the main idea of capping games per week for a specific team.

Caps are caps - they're limitations on how much someone can play something, and they're the opposite of promoting people to play more games. Capping a team on games played per week is essentially hobbling those who DO have more time and motivation to play in order to make them only run at the speed of people who have less time and motivation. That's bad business.

I totally agree with you that developing teams is the major draw with this game, so any idea to make the ladder more fair cant impede that too much. I dont really think either of these ideas do that to any significant extent.

I think you're wrong about impediment here. For those who want to qualify for the cup (and really, that's what we're talking about here) there's a pretty big incentive to focus on one time rather than spread your games among multiple teams - the ranking system incentivizes playing more games, so playing more games with the team you're trying to qualify with makes good sense, assuming you're a great coach.

Likewise, weekly caps don't help latecomers much since they'll always be <x> weeks behind the early starters, in an environment that gives bonus ranking to higher games played. It would mean there's no point at all in trying to qualify for the cup after a certain number of weeks since your team will be unable to play the number of games needed to rank seriously.

And in terms of your comment about fairness, yeah I agree youre never gonna make it perfectly fair for everyone regardless of commitment level, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to even things out where you can do so without harming the game.

I don't disagree about balance and fairness... I just don't agree, in games or in life, with the idea of holding back the strongest so the weakest can keep up. If some loon wants to put 12 hours a day into playing in CCL then power to them... maybe they deserve the spot in the cup just on merit of being so dedicated. I don't think favouring that sort of dedication over, say, the working guy who only plays 3x a week, at least in terms of competitive league outcomes, is a bad idea.

Straight elo isn't very good, but Elo factoring in the better predictive methods of assessment of a match (TV, zSum) is proving pretty good so far (82% correct prediction of matches in the dataset used so far - further testing to come).

..with the caveat that, at the last point we spoke, that was still worse post-hoc predictive ability than the ranking system we already use. Likewise, the test for quality of ranking systems doesn't tell us if it'd make a good matching system - for that you need to look at cumulative rating and its ability to predict individual match outcomes, and I'm guessing THAT is not at 82% - that'd be a ridiculously high prediction rate for individual matches using only information that existed at the time of the match.

I'm all in favour of a ranking system that maximizes post-hoc predictive ability... but I think that needs to be the focus, rather than a love of the idea of elo. For an elo based system to be worth replacing the existing system with it would need to a) be consistently and significantly better with its post-hoc prediction OR b) be roughly similar to what we have, but better able to allow later arrivals to rank high with superior performance.

Also, I'm a bit skeptical that cyanide would implement it... but that's not a reason not to develop it. Better is better even if it doesn't see the light of day, and I'm always in favour of better.

82% is the post hoc prediction rate for Elo with zSum and TV separated out as the prediction factor when compared with the 84% we're getting with the post hoc prediction factor of the current system, as you suggest. It's worse, but is it that much worse that it should be discarded?

For an elo based system to be worth replacing the existing system with it would need to a) be consistently and significantly better with its post-hoc prediction OR b) be roughly similar to what we have, but better able to allow later arrivals to rank high with superior performance.

Agree with this, and I'm leaning towards b at the moment for the reasons already stated by @Stringer-Bell. I think 82% is roughly similar to 84%. I've an arbitrary cutoff at 80% at the moment (~5% drop) in terms of acceptability of predictive power.

And yeah, all this will be moot if it doesn't get implemented. Worst case, though, we still have a ranking system which is pretty good at predicting matchwinners.

Capping a team on games played per week is essentially hobbling those who DO have more time and motivation to play in order to make them only run at the speed of people who have less time and motivation. That's bad business.

Regardless of how much I try to consider all the objections to that proposal that have been stated so far, I still can't help myself from liking it. I just can't see how it's that horrible solution (and definitely it's much easier to implement in comparison to mentioned ELO system - thus probability that Cyanide will agree to adopt is much higher), as it seems to me it basically, to some extent, brings schedule league's experience to the ladder. Is schedule such horrible atrocity of a system because it limits you to one match per week (usually)? It isn't, obviously, a lot of leagues use it, and it prevents many issues we are facing in ladders, like big TV diffs in many pairings MM comes up with, due to the fact there are not that much teams of closer TV to select from (due to the fact that teams develop more evenly, assuming they are all starting as fresh teams).

For me personally inability to play more than a certain number of matches per week with the same team isn't that great limitation (if at all), and I can see certain benefits of having 2+ different teams you play at the same time to overcome this limit (assuming you have all the time) - if something goes really bad for one of them, you still have some other to fallback to.

82% is the post hoc prediction rate for Elo with zSum and TV separated out as the prediction factor when compared with the 84% we're getting with the post hoc prediction factor of the current system, as you suggest. It's worse, but is it that much worse that it should be discarded?

Uh... yes? I mean, unless there's a truly compelling reason not to, it is an objectively worse ranking metric than what we already have. You can always check it against other seasons to see if season 10 is anomalous, but.. the fact that it has worse post-hoc predictive ability suggests its just not as good, overall, as the system we already have.

In fact, even if it was 86% to the current 84%, that still wouldn't be enough to justify petitioning them to overhaul the system... but its not slightly better... its slightly worse.

Agree with this, and I'm leaning towards b at the moment for the reasons already stated by @Stringer-Bell. I think 82% is roughly similar to 84%. I've an arbitrary cutoff at 80% at the moment (~5% drop) in terms of acceptability of predictive power.

What you need to look for, then, is how quickly the metric approaches its final value, and have a pretty strong case for that speed being much higher than that of the existing metric... meaning that latecomers can reach their theoretical maximum rating by way of much fewer games than currently, without the system whereby that happens being significantly less accurate overall.

My first thought for how to check that is to take the mean value for each metric for each team and the standard deviation. If the proposed metric is satisfying point b) then the mean and final should be significantly closer to one another, and the SDs should be significantly smaller.

Also, remember there's no need to eyeball for concepts like "roughly similar". It's why God gave us t-tests.

Regardless of how much I try to consider all the objections to that proposal that have been stated so far, I still can't help myself from liking it. I just can't see how it's that horrible solution (and definitely it's much easier to implement in comparison to mentioned ELO system - thus probability that Cyanide will agree to adopt is much higher)

...yet it runs contrary to one of the main design goals of CCL (promoting higher games played) and is disliked by all the CCL admins who have voiced an opinion. Given that they aren't going to be asking YOU for an opinion on the matter, you should consider and address the objections more, and try to win over people that are in a position to petition Cyanide for changes, like Netheos and Dode... or this is all just a futile masturbatory exercise.

it seems to me it basically, to some extent, brings schedule league's experience to the ladder.

Ok... why would we want that, exactly? The same argument was made in the past for using games played as the matchmaking metric even though it creates matches that are terribly unbalanced (worse than TV matching).

Is schedule such horrible atrocity of a system because it limits you to one match per week (usually)? It isn't, obviously, a lot of leagues use it, and it prevents many issues we are facing in ladders, like big TV diffs in many pairings MM comes up with, due to the fact there are not that much teams of closer TV to select from (due to the fact that teams develop more evenly, assuming they are all starting as fresh teams).

People who want to play in scheduled leagues have the option of playing in a scheduled league. If you're trying to field the idea that same games played creates more balanced matches... it's been looked at and found to be generally incorrect. It's a metric that makes worse matches over time, and which is less accurate that other metrics we have even in the early days of a team.

For me personally inability to play more than a certain number of matches per week with the same team isn't that great limitation (if at all), and I can see certain benefits of having 2+ different teams you play at the same time to overcome this limit (assuming you have all the time) - if something goes really bad for one of them, you still have some other to fallback to.

You already have that option. What we're talking about is taking away the option to play one team as much as you want. Lets not pretend this is about empowering everybody - it's about limiting the options of people who are more avid players of the game for the benefit of people who are less avid players. It also limits the ability of latecomers to a season to catch up on games played through more intense play sessions, because they'll hit their weekly limit.. and always be that limit x (weeks late they began) games behind the people who started early.

Oh, and the reason I didn't explain Elo in detail is I figured you had access to Google. It's actually surprisingly accurate when the appropriate factors are considered. Straight elo isn't very good, but Elo factoring in the better predictive methods of assessment of a match (TV, zSum) is proving pretty good so far (82% correct prediction of matches in the dataset used so far - further testing to come). If it maintains that sort of level intend to see how it works out when the TrueSkill system is applied next.

Honestly man, I mostly try and stick up for you and the admins when people complain about you guys, but you really are quite a douche. Yes I have access to google, very clever of you. Im asking you, the community representative/admin for this game, to directly explain this idea that you mention, and that's your response? Really helpful. Especially when even you yourself now go on to say that it isnt "straight" ELO, so googling ELO wouldnt have even answered the question.

I see this kind of response from you time and time again. I realize some people troll you, but maybe if your skin is so thin that you now feel the need to react like this when someone is simply trying to suggest something in a constructive way that you disagree with, you should not be in this role. You are not a good liason for this community. Even leaving aside the massive screw up at the start of this season, you are just stubborn and difficult to communicate with. Good luck growing the game if this is your attitude towards people who are actually trying to help you

Well the overall cap I'm suggesting is very much secondary, and less important, than the main idea of capping games per week for a specific team.

Caps are caps - they're limitations on how much someone can play something, and they're the opposite of promoting people to play more games. Capping a team on games played per week is essentially hobbling those who DO have more time and motivation to play in order to make them only run at the speed of people who have less time and motivation. That's bad business.

But again, you'd still be able to play as many games as you play now, and even with any specific team, youd be able to play as many games as you play now. Its not actually limiting how much anyone can play. Its spread out a bit, but you can still pump out 50 or 60 or wahtever number of games you want with that one team, just not all in the first week, which discourages other less hardcore players from competing. The only hobbling it does is eliminates an advantage from basically the top 1% of super hardcore grinders, and Im arguing that such a small impediment to such a small fraction of the player base is warranted if it makes the game better for everyone else.

I think you're wrong about impediment here. For those who want to qualify for the cup (and really, that's what we're talking about here) there's a pretty big incentive to focus on one time rather than spread your games among multiple teams - the ranking system incentivizes playing more games, so playing more games with the team you're trying to qualify with makes good sense, assuming you're a great coach.

see above

Likewise, weekly caps don't help latecomers much since they'll always be <x> weeks behind the early starters, in an environment that gives bonus ranking to higher games played. It would mean there's no point at all in trying to qualify for the cup after a certain number of weeks since your team will be unable to play the number of games needed to rank seriously.

Thats not true at all. You may have missed this, but Im not suggesting a flat cap per week. Im suggesting a cap that would apply for maybe the first 2-3 weeks and then be removed or at least loosened up significantly. That way you diminish the early grinder advantage, but late in the season you can still play as many games as you want, so you could still grind out 40 games in the final week and qualify like anyone else.

Also I should clarify that the main idea here isnt necessarily to help people who start late. That's good too I suppose, but the more important issue that affects more people isnt starting late, but simply not having the ability to keep up with the grind. Even if I start the champ ladder on day one, I, and most players, are only able to play a couple games a day at most. Some people literally grind out their 40 games in the first week, against week opposition, and that is the unfair advantage Im trying to address here. So its not so much about starting late as it is about the impossibility of keeping pace with the early grinders regardless of when you start.

And in terms of your comment about fairness, yeah I agree youre never gonna make it perfectly fair for everyone regardless of commitment level, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to even things out where you can do so without harming the game.

I don't disagree about balance and fairness... I just don't agree, in games or in life, with the idea of holding back the strongest so the weakest can keep up. If some loon wants to put 12 hours a day into playing in CCL then power to them... maybe they deserve the spot in the cup just on merit of being so dedicated. I don't think favouring that sort of dedication over, say, the working guy who only plays 3x a week, at least in terms of competitive league outcomes, is a bad idea.

I'm basically with you on this sentiment. But the thing is, even with a cap, the grinders and hardcore players will still have an advantage. They always will, and im not trying to eliminate that. Its still an advantage to max out 3 or 4 different teams in week one, while the casual player can only get a handful of games in. But at least its a much more level playing field and gives your average player a lot more hope for longer into the season than they have now, when theres a 45-8-4 chaos dwarf team on like day 4 of the ladder.

Honestly man, I mostly try and stick up for you and the admins when people complain about you guys, but you really are quite a douche. Yes I have access to google, very clever of you. Im asking you, the community representative/admin for this game, to directly explain this idea that you mention, and that's your response? Really helpful. Especially when even you yourself now go on to say that it isnt "straight" ELO, so googling ELO wouldnt have even answered the question.

Ok, if it came across that way then I apologise, but I suggest you reread what you wrote. You asked "how you would reward people more or less for playing specific opponents" and I gave you the example of Elo (and used the word "example" in my reply). You didn't ask for specifics, you simply asked how it could be done. I have no idea what knowledge you have of rating systems, how they work, or how they can do what they need to do, and the vagueness of your question suggested that the level of your knowledge was pretty low - if I misinterpreted then again, I apologise. However, based on that interpretation I gave you a start point to work from so you could find out a little more yourself about how you can "reward people more or less for playing specific opponents" - which was all you gave me to work from.
Your response: "As for the ELO thing, you didnt really answer or explain anything at all... just repeated what you said before. Im asking how it would actually work in practice." You didn't ask that at all: you just asked how it could be done. I provided an example of how it can be done.

I see this kind of response from you time and time again. I realize some people troll you, but maybe if your skin is so thin that you now feel the need to react like this when someone is simply trying to suggest something in a constructive way that you disagree with, you should not be in this role. You are not a good liason for this community. Even leaving aside the massive screw up at the start of this season, you are just stubborn and difficult to communicate with. Good luck growing the game if this is your attitude towards people who are actually trying to help you

Again, this wasn't thin-skin: you asked a question and I answered it. You didn't like the answer, for some reason.

So, before I go into more detail: are you aware of what Elo is and how the principle behind it works? I'm quite willing to answer clear questions and offer explanations and clarifications as necessary, but there's no point in me trying to do so if the answer is either too complex or too simplistic. Again, though: it is a work in progress.

Some people literally grind out their 40 games in the first week, against week opposition, and that is the unfair advantage Im trying to address here

And that's what an Elo-type ranking system would also do: if you reward people fewer rank points for playing against weaker opponents then those people will not gain as many rank points for grinding early, not gaining that same advantage.